Toronto director Kazik Radwanski follows his internationally acclaimed, award-winning debut Tower with this empathetic yet clear-eyed character study about a middle-aged married man who finds his only outlet in online gaming.

How Heavy This Hammer

Kazik Radwanski

Year

2015

Runtime

75 min

Language

English

Country

Canada

Principal Cast

Erwin Van Cotthem, Kate Ashley, Seth Kirsh, Andrew Latter

Since his short film Princess Margaret
Boulevard, Kazik Radwanski (who has collaborated
on all his films with his producing
partner Dan Montgomery) has established
himself as one of the most exciting young
filmmakers in anglophone Canada with
his combination of formal inventiveness
and deep sympathy for those who live their
lives on the margins. Now, with How Heavy
This Hammer — the follow-up to his adventurous,
award-winning first feature Tower,
which screened at the Festival in 2012 —
Radwanski raises the bar even higher.

A married father of two nearing middle
age, Erwin (Erwin Van Cotthem) is not quite
an outcast, but as his life slowly begins to
unravel we begin to understand just how
far outside the social order he truly is. Erwin
spends all of his free time playing fantasy
games online. When not on the computer,
Erwin is a barely conscious entity: virtually
everything else in his life is a distraction and
an annoyance (including his wife and children),
and his only physical exercise is rugby,
where he uses his bulk to his advantage and
releases his usually sublimated aggression.
A touching yet infuriating example of our
society's mysterious ability to freeze men
in adolescence, Irwin is both conscious of
and frustrated by his stunted existence, but
is either unwilling or incapable of getting out
of his rut.

Empathetic but pragmatic, How Heavy
This Hammer is a funny, forlorn vision of
North American masculinity at a crossroads.